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Low OG - Irish Ale

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AdamHops

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Joined
Nov 13, 2015
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Hello everyone,
Last night I brewed my 3rd beer. It was an Irish Red that was supposed to have an estimated OG of 1.049. I had some settings in Beersmith that were off. Somehow it had me put in an extra gallon than it should have for the sparge, and I ended up with 6.5 gallons of beer. I tried to let as much boil off as possible but at 2 AM I had to stop. This put my OG down to 1.035.

Everything is now in the fermenter with a blow off tube and about 1 inch of head space. Is there anything I can do now to correct the OG or should I just leave it as lesson learned? Do you think it will have a significant impact on the beer? I guess I'm not really worried as much about ABV as I am the body of the beer.

Thanks!
 
If headspace were not at issue, you could boil up a pound of DME in as little water as you could manage, and add it into the carboy. You could probably get up to 1.041 or so. But you would have no room left - sounds risky.

So, unless you have extra carboys lying around, the safets bet is to chalk it up to a lesson learned, and enjoy the beer. You'll have extra, so that's a plus.

Cheers,
 
When it's done, bottle up a couple gallons of it. Brew up a couple gallons of something similar maybe around 1.065 pour that into the fermentor with the remaining beer. You'll have two gallons of session beer and then 6.5 gallons of what you wanted, kind of, mostly.

All the Best,
D. White
 
Rename that bad boy to an Irish Light and drink it. Chalk it up for lesson learned for the next batch.
 
Did you measure the gravity after chilling down to pitching temps? Not many realize, at first, that hydrometer readings are temperature dependent. If you were measuring hot, your gravity could be significantly higher than you expect.
 
Did you measure the gravity after chilling down to pitching temps? Not many realize, at first, that hydrometer readings are temperature dependent. If you were measuring hot, your gravity could be significantly higher than you expect.

Yes. I measured at pitching temps.

Thanks for your replies everyone.
 
Anybody ever see one of those MIO drink enhancers, the little squirt bottles, with Hops juice in it? Take a beer like this, add a squirt, there you go.
 

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